How Pinterest can be used to promote your business
You’ve probably noticed an increase in the conversation about Pinterest. In fact, they just hit 10 million users in the US alone! I highlighted the site earlier this year more as a fun place to go, but more and more it is becoming a place for people to promote their business.
Here’s some ways you can engage Pinterest to promote your product or service:
If you run a lawn-care center, for instance, pin pictures of landscaping you find online or snap in your community. If you’re a brick-and-mortar store, pin shots of the interesting sites and people around your neighborhood and photos you take at community events. You also can search through Pinterest’s categories and add some inspirational, funny or beautiful images you find.
Then, follow interesting boards and individuals who post images that inspire you. Once you’ve done some pinning of other people’s content for a week or so and attracted a few followers, create a new board of your products. Add descriptions and perhaps the price to the images. Make sure they link back to your website and start tracking pinterest.com as a referral source in your web site analytics.
Next, try creating an image of a special deal or coupon just for your Pinterest followers. Upload it to a new board for Deals. Perhaps offer a prize to the person who gets the most likes or comments on a re-pin of the coupon, and then see who shares it the most. Don’t fret about creating multiple boards. People who follow you will see them all.
In a month or two, see if you’re getting referral traffic or sales. Depending on the results, you may need to tweak your boards with new images and words.
One thing is clear whether you’re on Pinterest for personal or business reasons: the best images — be they funny, beautiful or thought provoking — attract the most attention and followers.
How are your prices killing your business?
Do you or your sales team struggle to get the number of new customers your company needs? Do you feel like your facing an army of competitors who always manage to beat your prices? Does it seem like your prospects always want you to give them the world but aren’t willing to pay a fair price?
Do you think that if you dropped your prices just a little, all of those problems would go away and new business would start rolling in?
The good news is that you’re not alone. Lots of smart entrepreneurs have thought the same thing. The bad news is that they (and you) are dead wrong.
Today you’re going to learn that your prices are causing unimaginable damage to your business. More importantly, your going to learn why (it’s not the reason you think) and how to fix it right away. I’m even going to share some pricing mistakes I’ve made in our company, how it impacted us, and how we fixed it. That lesson alone worth it’s weight in gold, and you get to enjoy the benefits without the pain, hard work or lost profits we had to go through.
The race to the bottom is fast and painful
No matter how low you drop your prices, there will always be someone willing to sell for less. Many of those companies may not be around in a year or two, but there will be plenty of new companies lining up to take their place. And even if their quality and service is inferior to yours, to the customers who just shop for the lowest price, you’re just the same as everyone else.
To add insult to injury, the customers who chose you because of your price will jump ship as soon as someone new offers them even a slightly lower price.
Eventually, you’ll end up selling your products or services so cheaply that you’ll make little to no profit and your begin to hate your own business and resent your customers. Along the way, you’ll damage your company’s brand because people will associate it with cheap, inferior products and poor service.
A few years ago, I made this same mistake. I dropped our prices by 60% during a particularly rough patch in our company’s history. Did we make up for the loss of profit by an increase in volume?
Not even in the slightest.
In fact, our volume remained almost exactly the same. What changed was the type of client who contacted us.
Instead of getting calls from peoples who were interested in value, we were contacted by people who were only concerned about the price. Even though our prices were at rock-bottom, we were repeatedly asked for discounts and payment plans because the people who contacted us had the wrong mindset. To make matters worse, many of the clients we did work with during that time couldn’t afford to finish the projects they started.
You’re known by the company you keep
The success of your business depends on the type of customers you choose to work with. Another way to look at it is that the type of customers you turn down can have a greater impact than the ones you choose to work with.
When money is tight, it’s easy to fall into the trap of taking on any customer who is willing to spend money with you. Most entrepreneurs, including myself, have made that mistake.
The problem is that you then become know for working with that type of client and end up getting more of the same. Imagine a real estate agent who sells only luxury waterfront property, but she has a slow couple of months, so she takes a listing for a small home in a bad neighborhood. She does everything right and sells it quickly at a fair price. Her client loves her so much that they refer their friends and family to her. Not being one to turn away business, she helps them too. It’s admirable that she was willing to help these people, but now she doesn’t have the background that the seller of a beautiful and expensive waterfront home is looking for in a listing agent, so she’s stuck selling more homes in bad neighborhoods.
Success breeds success
My company has worked with small start ups, Fortune 500 companies and everything in between, and that’s taught me that usually, the higher up the food chain you go, the easier the customers are to work with and the more realistic their budgets and expectations are.
Many solo entrepreneurs are brilliant, dedicated and ambitious people, but they can often difficult to work with because they’re so used to doing everything on their own. Because of that,they’re often less willing to part with their money even though it would mean seeing better results faster than if they did the work on their own. They also like to have a lot of control over every tiny detail.
On the other hand, executives of larger companies who are comfortable delegating are more than happy to let you do your job your way while they focus on the end result. There is far less hand holding and your profits are usually higher.
That’s great, but my business is different
I’m sure you like to think of your business as a unique and beautiful snowflake, but it’s not.
Unless you’re selling a commodity, dropping your prices is a short term solution to a long term problem. You might get an increase in new business, but it’s not the type of business you want, and your profits will suffer.
The choice is yours. You can either turn a profit while you enjoy working with reasonable clients who have realistic budgets and expectations, or you can work at a loss while you’re miserable working with unreasonable clients who are simply looking for the absolute lowest price.
What’s the solution?
The difference is whether you choose to focus on the value that you’re bringing to the table, or on the price.
When we dropped our prices in response to a slow economy, we began attracting the wrong type of prospect. So the obvious solution was to raise our prices. In fact, we raised them even higher than they started off at.
To most people, it probably seems counter intuitive. How can the solution to a slow period be to raise your prices? That can’t work, can it?
Indeed. It can, and it did. And it will work for you too, if you do it right.
That’s not to say it wasn’t “keep you up all night” scary. It was, and initially, I fought the natural urge to go back. But instead, I stuck with it and focused on the value that we provided. We spent more time qualifying our prospects – we were interviewing them just as much as they were interviewing us. And since our profit margins were higher (though still very reasonable) it allowed us to only work with the clients who were the best fit and turn the rest down. As a result, our clients got better results, we made a decent profit, and everyone was a lot happier working together.
Are you ready to make that sort of dramatic change in your business? Grab a note pad and make a list of all the benefits you bring to the table, then raise your prices by 50% or even 100%. You’ll still be reaching the same number of people with your marketing dollars, but their perception of your company will change, so the type of people who you speak to will be drastically different. They will be more concerned with the value and the outcome they’ll receive from working with you instead of just your price.
Using Facebook as a Marketing Tool
Does your business have a Facebook profile? Facebook is a social tool that not only connects individuals, but it can also facilitate connections between people and businesses. One of the best reasons to have a Facebook profile is that it can be indexed by search engines. Since Facebook is one of the most highly trafficked sites on the web, you’re wasting a valuable marketing opportunity if you haven’t created a profile yet.
Here are a few tips on how to use Facebook as a strategic marketing tool:
- By inserting keyword-rich text throughout your fan page and updating it regularly, you can create tremendous search engine optimization.
- In addition to sending regular updates to fans, you can also use Facebook Events to promote upcoming events and activities. Because activities that members engage in are reported on a news feed, word about events spreads very quickly without being intrusive.
- Select an easily recognizable graphic or photo that is familiar for visitors, and write an appealing About Us/Bio to summarize what you do. Or include a call to action, click-able hyperlink for more information.
- Encourage fans and visitors to add content on your “wall” to become part of your online community. Also, their content goes out into news feeds, creating more visibility for your site.
- Actively respond to your fans’ comments, questions, suggestions, etc. to show that you are listening and want to be involved with your online community.
- Try Facebook’s Social Ads to drive targeted traffic from the entire Facebook site directly to your fan page. Just remember that many people don’t visit social networking sites to view advertisements; they visit to be social.
- Secure a unique user name (or vanity URL) that is short and memorable by using your brand name, company name, etc.
For additional ideas on how to increase brand awareness and share information with your customers and prospects, give us a call today!
